


Speaking Aid

by ConnorProject2K17



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Lesbians, Transgender, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 22:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15375288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConnorProject2K17/pseuds/ConnorProject2K17
Summary: Reg has been deaf since she was five years old. When the sun goes down she realises she can share thoughts with a woman named Craft.  The only problem is; Craft can't talk to her.





	Speaking Aid

Reg hated Soulmates. She hated watching them parade around with sappy smiles and their hands linked. She hated all the knowing winks and obnoxious grins they gave her whenever she asked about It. She hated all of the secrets and lies surrounding them, all because of some stupid law.

Many years ago, Soulmates were discovered by a German doctor, who explained that people are drawn to each other because their atoms were near to each other when the universe was created, and over time the same atoms keep coming back together.

Everyone had a Soulmate; someone whose main goal in life, outside their own, was to make you happy, and that there was no such thing as a bad Soulmate.

There was one very specific way to tell who your Soulmate is, and as soon as you know, you can never leave that person. Much like swans, you mate for life.

Unfortunately, shortly after the Soulmate Theory was created, a law was made, making the knowledge of how to know if someone is your Soulmate a secret. Telling someone how to get a Soulmate was punishable by death for you, that person, and both of your Soulmates.

So Reg had gone twenty-four years, not knowing who or where her Soulmate was, and not having any help in finding them. And she was getting close to giving up.

x

Reg

x

I gripped the parcel like a bear trap, my nails digging into the cardboard like tiny drills.

Five minutes. I'd been standing outside this godforsaken house for five whole minutes, ringing the doorbell. The blue of the door was beginning to hurt my eyes, and I tiredly blinked away the sleep dust.

My day had not started well.

First, I had woken up late, so had made a mad dash to get ready, skipping breakfast in the madness.

Then, I had gotten a ticket for speeding, even though I was sure I wasn't, which slowed me down even further.

Then, I had an even larger shift at the office then normal because of the ten minutes that I had missed getting ready.

Then, to top it off, I had to drive out to the middle of nowhere in the desert to deliver a parcel twice as big as my own head.

And now I was standing here, trying not to collapse under the heat of the sun.

And when I say the middle of nowhere, I mean it. There's sand as far as the eye can see, with cliffs and tunnels and one single road running in the middle of it. I half expected to see Wil.E Coyote run past.

And sitting comfortably in the middle of it, right next to the road, is a pretty little house. With white paint, and blue windows and a matching door, it looked like it belonged on a postcard, not slap-bang in the middle of the Western Desert.

I tapped my foot impatiently. This person, whoever they were, was really beginning to get on my nerves.

What if this was a prank, I realised suddenly. What if this house was being used for some radioactive-government-shit, and someone decided to make some poor-unsuspecting Desert Mail girl drive out to deliver a parcel to nobody. I gave the parcel an experimenting shake. Something moved inside of it, something breakable by the feel of it.

I huffed in annoyance, and stamped my foot. Juvenile, I know, but I was moments away from falling asleep standing up.

I looked around in boredom, and my eyes fell onto the large, black truck that I had parked to the side of the house. An idea sprouted in my mind, and I smiled to myself.

I gently placed the parcel in front of the blue door-which didn't have a welcome mat; weird-and slid away. I made my way over to the patiently waiting truck, climbed inside, and waited.

Almost as soon as my truck door as shut, the house door opened, and someone walked out.

Given at how they almost hit their head on the doorframe, I had assume they were quite tall. Skinny, too, with how their clothes hung off of them. I felt slightly bad for them, until I remembered how long I had waited, and shoved the feeling back down again.

They looked down at the box, picked it up, rattled it, and looked around. They almost looked at me, and I ducked.

Moments passed, and I stayed hidden until I was sure that they had left. Peering up I checked the door, and found that I was right. Nobody was there, and the parcel had been taken.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I put my foot down and drove off.

As I drove, I thought back to the person. When I was watching them, I hadn't taken much notice to what they looked like but now, as tumbleweeds and cacti flew past me, it was all I could think about.

They had brown skin. Not naturally brown, like mine, but tanned. Like they had been pale, but had stayed in the sun too long.

Brown hair, too. It had been pinned back into a style I would have associated with the forties, and was the colour of chocolate.

A blue professional jacket, a white shirt, khaki trousers and what looked like black army boots. A pair of thick, black sunglasses rested on their upturned nose. They looked like they belonged in the Matrix, or Terminator. It was unnerving seeing such fancy clothes practically hanging off of their body, like a homeless person going to the opera. It made me feel uneasy.

They hadn't paid.

I stopped the car immediately, then started it up, and turned around, driving back to the house.

Back at the house, back in front of that painfully-blue door. I knocked rapidly.

"I know you're in there," I yelled, or at least tried to. It was hard to yell when you couldn't hear yourself. "I saw you leave the house a moment ago!"

What if they had left? Where could they go? I looked around quickly, as if expecting to see them leaving a random supermarket. But nope; nothing but sand and the occasional cliff.

As I turned back, I fiddled with my hearing aid. There was a distant fumbling noise, and then nothing. I sighed and knocked on the door again.

"Please come out. You need to pay for that parcel!"

I felt the ground shudder slightly, which probably meant that the person on the other side of the door was running. It opened suddenly, and then the person was standing in front of me. They panted slightly, holding their chest, and looked up at me. I saw my own bewildered expression staring back in the reflection of their glasses. They were so dark I couldn't see what was behind them.

The person started to say something, but it's so jumbled I couldn't read what it was.

"Slow down!" I cried, holding my hands in front of me. I hoped it wasn't too loud, but they jumped anyway.

"Sorry."

The person started up again, their lips moving so fast I couldn't make out any one word.

"Stop!" I yelled, or I hope it's yelling. The person shuts up, and shrinks away. I take a step backwards, not wanting to get into their personal space; they look like the need it.

"I'm deaf." I tell them, and point a finger to my hearing aid. They're expressionless, but their face has gone red. I feel the need to leave, and crush it. I have a job to do.

"Here." I pull out my clipboard from my bag, and show it to them. They look at it, before taking it from me and scribbling on it. When they hand it back I see their signature on all the appropriate forms.

"Thank you." I say, and turn back.

And suddenly I'm driving away again. Except this time I have more to think about.

x

'...Theater is a building or outdoor area in which plays and other dramatic performances are given...'

I look up quickly, and turn to see Pippa re-filing the cabinets.

"Did you say something?" I ask. She looks up from her filing, and shakes her head. Odd. I fiddle with my hearing aid, jumping slightly as a piercing noise fills my head.

"Yo-...-kay?" I hear Pippa ask, her voice sounding like it's underwater. I nod, and take my hand away.

"Yeah, i'm fine, thanks. I think my hearing aid's picking up radio signals or something." I tell her. She gives me a funny look.

"C-... do...-at?" She asks, and I lower my head to shut my eyes. Her voice grates like knives against my ears.

Something touches my shoulder, and I open my eyes to see Pippa standing over me. She's touching me.

'Can they do that?' she signs, and I shrug.

"I don't know. Apparently." I tell her. That's a good enough answer, and she goes back to filing. I go back to shuffling and re-shuffling my pieces of paper from this mornings route, and my eye falls on one particular signature.

'C.T.Hound.'

The woman in the desert. The woman with chocolate hair, and Matrix sunglasses, and way too many apologies for me to keep track.

The most interesting person i've met since moving to this town eight years ago. Does she dye her hair? Where did she get her glasses? Could I get some? Would It be weird to wear matching sunglasses? Why does she live in a desert?

Will I ever see her again?

'...your head long after you've seen it...'

Time froze. In the corner of my eye, Pippa stopped stamping letters, her arm cough at an odd angle. Outside a group of pigeons hoverd mid-air over a lost packet of chips. Bile rose up my throat like a drain, clogging my airways.

"W-what did you say?" I felt myself ask, vomit threatening to spill from behind my lips.

Pippa looked up at me, put aside her stamp, and looked down at her hands like she had never seen them before.

'I didn't say anything.' she signed, and went back to working. I swallowed thickly, running a hand through my short hair. I was going mad. I was hallucinating. Can deafness make you insane?

'What's going on?' the voice said again. I stiffened. Raising a shaking hand, I fiddled with my hearing aid. Can hearing aids pick up radio signals? Hadn't I seen that in a movie once? Or was that baby monitors?

'Is someone outside?' the voice said. This wasn't like when people spoke through my hearing aid. This was clear, and loud, and...

...and not coming from outside. It was a thought, or a daydream. It had the same clearness of when a song got stuck in my head.

'No one's there.'

'Who are you?' I thought back. I felt ridiculous. But it was like there was a little person living inside my brain, telling me things. Like I said; ridiculous.

Wasn't it?

'Who are you?' the voice responded. Just as I was about to answer, something small hit my shoulder. I looked down to see a small wad of paper, and up to see Pippa frowning at me disapprovingly.

'What are you doing?' she signed. I blinked stupidly, and looked around. I was still in the post office. There was no little person inside my head. I wasn't crazy.

'Who are you?' the voice demanded, and I flinched.

"I just drifted off for a minute. Sorry." I shrugged at Pippa, who rolled her eyes and went back to her work. I felt a small bubble of anger rise in my chest, before remembering I had bigger problems. Ducking my head, I picked up a pen to look like I was working .

'My name is Reg.' I thought. After a moment of silence I began to panic; were they still there? Had I imagined it? Was this some kind of scientific breakthrough, and was I saying the wrong thing?

'I'm still here.' the voice assured me. 'I don't think that this is science, and you haven't said anything wrong.'

They sounded nervous. I was nervous too, but they were on the verge of crying.

'I'm sorry.' thy apologised. Their voice was deep, and gravelly, like they had a sore throat.

'I'm sorry.' they apologised again.

'You can hear my thoughts?' I asked. I realised then that I couldn't hear my own voice. The thought disheartened me.

'Yes? I'm sorry, I know it's a huge invasion of privacy, but if I could stop it I would.'

'I think I can read your thoughts as well.' I interrupted. 'Were you thinking about a song, or a musical or something?'

'A musical, yes! Sorry, I was just reading a book about musicals, sorry if that was annoying.'

'It's fine.' I stopped. What can I say now?


End file.
